Pearling
Now known as the town of Denham, Shark Bay's township was once a pearler's camp called 'Freshwater Camp'. The first pearls to be discovered in Western Australia were in Shark Bay in the 1850s by government surveyor Lieutenant Benjamin Helpman. He noticed the profusion of Pinctada albina oyster shell banks and began dredging shallow waters. Shells could be harvested by hand, collected by divers or by dredging - dragging wire baskets over the banks behind a single-mast sailing boat. In the 1870s, pearlers began trawling for shells in deeper waters and partitioned the beds, which had been over fished and stripped of shells by the 1890s.
Oyster-harvesting was usually done by men, while women and children had the job of cleaning the shells. Barrels known as 'pogey pots' were used store inedible oyster flesh which would rot, and was then boiled (a process which created a terrible smell) so that the pearls would drop to the bottom of the pot – sometimes as little as two pearls for every hundred shells opened.
Pearl shell was used to make buttons prior to the advent of plastic, and thus was in demand in the 1800s, along with small straw-coloured seed pearls which were hugely popular throughout the 19th century for use in fine jewellery and ornaments. The highest quality pearl was sent to Europe, while lower grade shell was thrown away or put to novel use.
Shark Bay's pearling industry came to an end as its once-abundant oyster-shell banks were depleted and shell buttons decreased in popularity in favour of plastic. These days, wild pearl oyster numbers are once again rising while cultured pearls are commercially cultivated near Monkey Mia. For more information please visit Blue Lagoon Pearls.
Pearl Farm Tours are now available, click here to book.
Pastoral
Shark Bay's dry climate lends itself very well to rearing sheep, and as such pastoralism was one of the region's first industries. Pastoral leases were first conferred in the 1860s with 15 sheep stations eventually being built, beginning on Dirk Hartog Island in 1869 and by the 1960s there were approximately 142,000 sheep in Shark Bay
The logistics of transporting the wool to market made running a sheep station challenging, particularly due to there being very few roads at that time. Wool was transported over land using horse drawn carts or camels and then carried to larger boats via dinghies and loaded from the south coast at Henri de Freycinet Harbour (near Nanga Bay) or Flagpole Landing (at Hamelin Pool).
Another difficulty for station owners was the lack of fresh water. Pipelines were installed to carry brackish water from beach wells into troughs, and over 100 artesian bores were sunk in the region. Droughts were a huge challenge, in the mid-1930s and again in the 1970s serious droughts reduced Shark Bay's flocks to an all-time low. In the 1990s the wool market collapsed, forcing stations to change their source of income. Sheep were replaced with cattle at Carrarang and Tamala became cattle stations, Hamelin Station took on goats, while Dirk Hartog Island and Nanga introduced tourism alongside their pastoral operations.
